The Woods Hole Science Stroll was a great opportunity to engage the public and showcase the eMOLT system alongside our other Cooperative Research endeavors. People were impressed with the willingness of fishermen to work with scientists to collect data that benefits the industry, scientific endeavors, and the public at large. One of the less talked about benefits of citizen science projects like this is that they democratize science, pulling researchers out of our ivory towers, empowering you all to participate in the process, and promoting engagement with society at large. These benefits are highlighted in a recent article published in The Journal of Science Communication called “Exploring scientists’ perceptions of citizen science for public engagement with science”. The full article is pretty long, but you can read a summary of it here

This past week, we got our first data from the DO loggers that were hastily deployed up in Maine last week to monitor the potential impacts of a large plankton bloom underway in the Gulf of Maine. So far, both loggers that reported are showing good levels of Dissolved Oxygen with no discernable downward trends off Cape Elizabeth and Isle Au Haut. We will be working with our colleagues at The Lobster Institute to get some more of these sensors out on Maine-based fishing vessels over the next few weeks.

George and Huanxin went up to the South Shore on Friday afternoon and upgraded the deckbox software on two lobster boats out of Cohasset. Of course, driving back onto the Cape on a Friday afternoon in August isn’t a great situation, but we try to work around fishermen’s availability as best we can. It’s also why this update is coming out this morning instead of last Friday.

JiM has been experimenting with a new open-source “particle tracking” routine, recently developed by oceanographers in Norway, called “OpenDrift”. It allows one to numerically simulate drifter tracks through modeled ocean circulation fields. Thanks to some help from our Rutger’s colleagues, he was able to make some initial tests of the system using three student-built units currently drifting in the Gulf of Maine. As see here, the real drifters are distributed in different parts of the Gulf including one of the Southern Maine Community Colleage units that has made its way to the upper reaches of the Bay of Fundy. As seen below, it subjected to the enormous tides. The eastern portion of Digby Harbor is visible in the lower half of the frames.